#groundhog day dutch angle zoom out

[dailydigidraw]

It's still the 20th century!?

[mi6012stevenhaggie]

Critical Analysis

As with every project, I struggled for a good number of weeks on deciding exactly what to do. As it was stated, that your final project really defines the route you want to take into the animation industry. This really had me worried as I still don't really know exactly what I would like to do.

I decided to go with what I knew, and what I had always been involved in, making a music video. It took me a while to pick a track to use as I had no recent material, having put my music on hold while I am at Uni.

 I picked a track that I thought had lots of strong visual ideas, I had always imagined a groundhog day scenario for the song, where a man sits in a chair all day not really doing much. I used this as a basis to form my idea. The lyrical content links to many different subjects, such as social media addiction, social exclusion, depression, anxiety, agoraphobia, repetitive lifestyle, routine, trapped in the system, simulation, virtual reality and many more, which can be picked out in the lyrics. So I researched these areas, to build my idea on solid foundations, and form some strong visual representations.

 I was keen to build on the compositing module and do some kind of compositing for this project, but the more I planned it out, the more I thought it would work entirely in 3D, but with added composite footage of me performing the song, to the actual animation instead, so the opposite of what I had been doing really.

 Once I had my idea down, I began to plan it out, using all the techniques learnt from previous modules. I broke down the character design and modelling module again, and repeated all the stages of that process to make sure I was doing all that needed to be done. Bible, Colour Sheet, Movement Sheets, Negative space etc. I created two characters, one is a male, wearing large sunglasses, dressed in shorts and t shirt. The other is like the manifestation of all of his fears and worries (demons) which only becomes visible as he visibly becomes worn down by the repetition of his everyday life. I wanted to create the kind of Bill Murray groundhog day effect to it, but I also loved the scene in Westworld, where the man discovers he has been made into one of the hosts. As we see each day repeating for him, living out the same scenarios with the same person, until he glitches and things go downhill pretty quickly. I liked the idea and wanted to bring a little of that into my piece too. As the climax of my video results in the characters environment glitching and a door appears, but the door is just painted on the wall, the character kicks down the wall and reveals he is in fact in a large white space surrounded by other 'sets' where he has been living. He turns to look back into his home, taking off his glasses, we find out that he was just an avatar in a virtual reality scenario for a real human, who is left standing, holding a VR headset in a large white open space surrounded by nothingness.

I created the the T-pose images and modelled the characters using Maya. I was a little rusty with doing a lot of these things so had to watch a few tutorial videos again to recap how to do certain things. I only had to UV map one of the characters for texturing as I intended the shadow like man to be completely black, casting no shadows and reflecting no light, so just a dead blackness, only with 2 eyes reflecting the light. I also think I may render him out separately so that I can composite him n the shots with some transparency possibly, still unsure on that part. I enjoyed texturing my character using UV snapshot in Photoshop, and trying to create a nice looking texture and bump map for him, only a really subtle amount. Feedback from a few people have stated he looks a bit like a Muppet, and I think that works really well for this.

 I created rigs for the characters using Advanced Skeleton again, following the procedures taught to us last year, checking back on last years blog for reminders. I really enjoyed this process, trial and error of getting the joints in the correct places for the movement you desire. Then came the weight painting, I had a lot of problems on my character to begin with, which was really frustrating, I still don't feel I know exactly what I'm doing regarding that area, but I think I managed to do it well enough so that it all works ok. I still need to go and tweak a few areas like the fingers. But the biggest problem was the sides of the beard being affected by the arms. I managed to get through that part in the end though, so that was a huge relief.

 I had 4 sets to design, and used techniques learned from the Game Design to help me plan those out too, sketching and testing out the shapes and sizes of the spaces, and also create the large empty kind of feeling I wanted to go for. The design is also similar to my games design, following quite a creepy and sinister looking environment, dark, dirty and mouldy looking walls and assets. I went by my designs to create the first room, the main set in which most of the action takes place, the sitting room. I intend to make a lot of textures for the walls using the UV snapshot again, and adding peeling wallpaper, mouldy wet patches, etc. Hopefully producing something that looks a little unsettling. I will repeat this process for each room. I am modelling as much as I can, but I may also use a few free download models from websites, which I will give credit for in my notes when I write it all up.

 I hadn't really created an animatic before so this was my first go with that, I drafted out a rough storyboard using biro, and a lot of people commented on how they liked the look of that style. I did too, but its not something I wanted to carry onto the final look of my film really. I edited the storyboard along to the music, to try and structure out the plot of the video, trying to get timing right and to see if it worked. I think it works really well, I was concerned that it all may be happening too quickly and would have liked to linger on some shots a little longer, but having made many music videos I have found that generally they tend to be really quick cuts between shots, flashing things up just to help the narrative advance.  So I am still confident that will be fine.

It will probably mainly consist of scenes with little to minimal movement, until the end sequence, as it is very quick flashes of the repeating scenes each day until that point. Hugo commented that my storyboard had a lot of mid shots and not much diversity in the camera angles. I think I just like to plan out a basic look of the shots, because when I get hold of a camera in 3D space, I know I will be able to find much better angles to represent each shot, so I imagine it will stray slightly from the ones in the animatic, but to something a little more pleasing or disturbing to the eye. Using Dutch angles and slow zooms and pans, I think I will be able to create something quite cinematic. I would also like to try out focus shifts in some scenes, which is something I have never tried in Maya, but will be doing a lot of research on to find out how it works.

 I have done most of the work so far at home on my home PC, just to save bus fares really. But when it comes to animating I plan to use the Uni computers, so I have been a little concerned about transferring my files to the Uni computers as previously I have had problems with all my textures etc. when opening them up. As I have been setting things up in Renderman 22.3 and Gary mentioned there had been issues with it, and that the Uni computers didn't have that version on yet. So I was worried that I may have to reapply all of the textures to everything again. But I will cross that bridge when I come to it, and for now I will just finish the models and maybe finish the texturing off first thing when we come back, after checking out what the situation is with Renderman.

 I have really enjoyed this module and found myself really throwing myself into it and just cracking on, the thought of having a really nice animated music video for one of my own songs, is something I am really excited about. Creating everything from the music to the video, using techniques that I have learned over the last year. I hope to have something very professional and cinematic looking, that carries the message from the song, and bridges that gap between audio and visual for the listener. It will also be great to have something that I could add to my show reel, as an impressive piece of animation work.